Casa Yari has officially reopened at 2743 W. Division St. in Humboldt Park, more than a year after its original Logan Square location was forced to close. The Puerto Rican and Honduran restaurant, led by chef and owner Yari Vargas, now sits along Paseo Boricua, the neighborhood where Vargas herself grew up.
Vargas launched Casa Yari in 2013 at 3268 W. Fullerton Ave., where it operated as a small neighborhood spot for nearly 12 years, according to Voyage Chicago. That run ended after April 6, 2025, when the restaurant lost its lease following the sale of the building, as detailed in a Reddit thread documenting the closure. As Secret Chicago reports, the relocation has effectively brought Vargas back to the neighborhood that shaped her.
A Return Fueled by Loyal Customers
Per Secret Chicago's account, Casa Yari's revival was fueled by dedicated customers who repeatedly asked Vargas about her next steps after the closure. “I couldn't give up,” Vargas told the outlet, describing the demand for the restaurant's return as comparable to the fervor around Bad Bunny. Before the full reopening, the kitchen tested its footing with soft-opening preview dinners at the Division Street space in early February, per a separate Reddit post on the timeline.
The new space, Secret Chicago notes, functions as an extension of Vargas's own home. Her father helped build it, and the dining room features a large replica of her mother's favorite tree near the entrance, along with family photographs on the walls. The menu itself carries personal stories, including a tribute to recipes from Vargas's uncle Efrain, and reflects a belief passed down from her grandmother that cooking is a way to express love, according to the same report.
Roots in Two Caribbean Kitchens
Vargas was born and raised in Humboldt Park to a Puerto Rican mother from Lares and an Afro-Latino Honduran immigrant father from Progreso, according to Chicago Gourmet. She built the Casa Yari menu around her parents' traditional family recipes, blending the two heritages into a single fusion concept aimed at introducing diners to both cultures through food.
The restaurant was co-founded with business partner Hector Ruiz, an investor with no prior restaurant experience who backed Vargas's vision from the start and now manages front-of-house operations alongside her, per Voyage Chicago's founding-story interview. Casa Yari has also built a following for its extensive plant-based options: Vargas taught herself vegan and vegetarian cooking techniques so the restaurant could offer parallel meat-free versions of nearly every entree, including house-made seitan churrasco and vegan pastelon, according to HappyCow. On the dessert side, Vargas had more than 29 flan flavors in 2018, according to Voyage Chicago.
Landing on a Landmarked Cultural Corridor
Casa Yari's new address places it directly on Paseo Boricua, a half-mile corridor marked by two 59-foot-tall, 45-ton welded steel Puerto Rican flags that were designated official Chicago Landmarks in 2022, according to Urbanize Chicago. The corridor has long served as a hub for Puerto Rican culture and business in Humboldt Park. Local civic leaders and city officials have also worked over the years to broaden Division Street's commercial identity, encouraging dining options that represent other Latin American heritages alongside its Puerto Rican core, per a DNAinfo report from 2015.
Since its relocation and preview services, Casa Yari earned recognition on Chicago Magazine's April Hot List of notable local dining spots, according to a post on the restaurant's Facebook page. For Vargas, the new dining room now welcomes both longtime regulars who followed her from Logan Square and first-time visitors discovering her family's cooking for the first time.
